Evotec acquires stake in Exscientia

German CRO Evotec AG announced an €15m investment in British Exscienta Ltd. to push artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery.

Evotec AG (Hamburg, Germany) has acquired a minority stake in Exscienta Ltd., a pioneer in self-learning systems for drug discovery. The Hamburg-based company used its recent €75 EIB loan to finance the transaction. Through its investment, Evotec becomes the first strategic shareholder in the UK-based company, which partnered with Sanofi and GSK this year.

According to Exscienta's Big Pharma partners, the companies self learning algorithms could cut time and cost of drug discovery by 25%. While there is no detailed information available on the function of Exscienta’s AI system, the company suggests that it actively can learn from previous experimental results and rapidly evolves compounds towards the desired candidate criteria. Exscientia systems learn from both existing data resources and experimental data from each design cycle. The principle is similar to how a human would learn, but the AI process is far more effective at identifying and assimilating multiple subtle and complex trends to balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria. As a result, the AI-driven process is more likely to achieve the end goal and to do this more rapidly and efficiently than traditional human endeavour.

Evotec’s investiment adds to an cooperation in advancing mono- and bispecific small molecule leads in immuno-oncology, the companies had established last year. This proceeds will enable Exscientia to drive higher value partner programmes and expand discovery on its automated design platform.

"Our investment in Exscientia represents Evotec's single biggest equity placement to date and in, what we feel, is the world leading AI technology company,“ said Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec. „Working with Exscientia on a joint immuno-oncology project over the past year, we have experienced first-hand how its AI approaches, along with our medicinal chemistry platform, can positively and radically impact drug discovery. We are very excited about the joint potential to leverage AI in chemistry."

„We are delighted that Evotec has made this investment for a minority equity stake, allowing Exscientia to deliver more drug discovery projects in a rapid and capital efficient manner,“ said Prof. Andrew Hopkins, Chief Executive Officer of Exscientia.